Diego Luna is at Home Hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!

As I’ve said before, I am a big fan of Diego Luna. But in my house, no one loves Diego Luna more than my husband. Even though the show has been over for weeks, my man lives in the Andor subreddit, so that’s how I learned that Cassian Andor was guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!

And Diego Luna did not wait to go there. In his first monologue on Monday, he addressed what has been in many of our minds here in California, but more specifically, Los Angeles. Please watch his monologue and meet me on the other side. 

 

The monologue was moving and passionate, with a little humor adding levity to a heartbreaking subject. And I feel funny calling it a subject because this sh-it isn’t theoretical to people–it is real. For months now, many people have been living in fear or experiencing what they have feared for themselves or their loved ones: –deportation. I don’t know the logistics of when he signed on to guest host, or how long Diego and the Jimmy Kimmel Live! team planned to go this hard to support the migrant community through this monologue, but I know that for myself, it felt important to hear him say what he said on the same day that the US Supreme Court ruled that the government can deport people to third countries.  

While a monologue can’t fix or even name all the injustices and all the pain being experienced by people all over, these words matter because in our own way, and on our own platforms, we have to keep calling this shit out. What this administration continues to do is not f-ucking right (and it’s not just about immigration). 

I wish I could articulate all that I am feeling right now, but I can’t. I just know that for months I’ve had this pain in my heart that intensified weeks ago, as I read or hear about ICE presence at school graduations, football games, and even job fairs in our local colleges. I see those damn ICE vehicles so much more as I drive in and out of my little city, waiting on the side of the road or already having pulled a car of people that look like my friends, like my family. 

I know that Diego Luna is making the rounds as part of Andor’s Emmy campaign, and now that I think about it, guest hosting for Jimmy Kimmel is an obvious stop since it’s on ABC and this is a Disney show that has a great chance at picking up awards. And maybe I’m just a basic pop culture bitch who is a sucker because a Mexican man who opens a late night monologue greeting everyone in Mexican accented Spanish moves me, even at a campaign stop. But what I know about Diego Luna, as well as the many interviews my husband has made me watch, read, or listen to in the lead up to and in the aftermath of Andor’s second and final season made his call for empathy and action genuine. I think doing this monologue as he campaigns for Andor is risky. But that Diego Luna is willing to deliver this monologue is not surprising, if you know anything about him and who he’s been since he was a young man. 

And speaking of being a young man, if you want more of Diego Luna aside from his Jimmy Kimmel Live! hosting gig this week (the first episode had a great line-up - Adria Arjona, Patton Oswalt, and Nezza!), check out his interview on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend where once again, he is not afraid to get political, and not just about current events (tune in for some shade for former Mexican President Vicente Fox!). I love how this episode helped me reminisce on a part of my childhood monoculture (telenovelas – how did I not know that Conan was on a telenovela?!), which is how I first saw Diego Luna as an actor. I loved hearing him talk about his father’s work as a set designer because of the humor and love in those stories. Many of the people who worked in those sets had known his late mother because she had been a costume designer working alongside them. So when this kid was hanging around those sets with his dad, these people mothered him because they knew what he had lost since he was 2 years old. For these reasons, at a very early age, theater and opera sets felt like home for him. 

I loved his candor as he once again explains why Andor needed to be two seasons instead of five so that it could be done right. But I also loved learning how Luna’s work on Y Tu Mamá También ultimately made it possible for him to be cast as Cassian Andor in Rogue One, how its director saw in this film the possibility of making a Star Wars series that felt realistic. And I think it is amazing that Diego Luna went from being incredulous that he, a Mexican guy who did not even speak English, could be seen as the lead of a Star Wars film…to an executive producer on a Star Wars set who could feel at home in it within a decade. He describes his experience in one of the final episodes of Andor with an interview with Variety: 

“I was getting emotional by everything. I would go into tears many times a day. I thought it wasn’t going to be possible, that we were not going to get there. It was a triumph in many ways.

One other thing about that ep: The director and the DOP are Mexican. This is something I just realized a few days ago. I was speaking my language with people I’ve known for 25 years, making jokes in the way I joke at home, but I was on the “Star Wars” set. That feeling of like, shit, this became home. I’m so at home that I’m here with my homies fucking making jokes in Spanish, and the AD, who is Scottish, is trying to catch up. In “Rogue One,” I was the one catching up, and here it was the other way around. It felt very special.”

If you haven’t watched Andor because it’s a Star Wars show, let go of that (understandable) bias. You don’t have to know or love Star Wars…I don’t! I’m just married to someone who does. But it doesn’t matter. I know most have said elsewhere already, but I still want to repeat it–Andor is a damn good show that feels hella relevant right now. Let it validate your frustration, your anger. And let it motivate you to do something about it. In his monologue, Diego Luna concludes by sharing the number for the US Congress switchboard, as well the organizations Public Counsel and KIND (Kids In Need of Defense). Those might be a few ways to start.